Robotics in the Forest Workshop

April 21-23, 2015 – Hyatt Regency Montreal

Sponsored by:

The Workshop

April 21-23, 2015, FPInnovations presented the Robotics in the Forest Workshop to exchange and discuss promising opportunities for advanced technologies in forest operations. For the first edition of this event, nearly 75 guest speakers and participants got together in downtown Montreal.

This event coordinated by FPInnovations attracted participants from the forest industry, equipment manufacturers and suppliers, government agencies, universities, advanced technology providers as well as people in the research field, and not only from Canada. The participants came from twelve different countries, and some from as far away as New Zealand, Brazil and South Africa.

One of the workshop objectives was to present the representatives in the forest sector with the progress achieved in other sectors and, in particular, the university network and the mining sector, with the development and integration of automation and robotics technologies. A second objective was to identify the most promising technological solutions for meeting the challenges of the lack of manpower in tomorrow’s forest sector and the profound changes in tomorrow’s “new” manpower as well.

Nearly 20 technical presentations were delivered, covering topics as varied as the technologies used in mines, robotics in manufacturing plants and in the field, aerospace, remote operations, self-learning systems, automation of repetitive tasks and new high-performance sensors now available on the market, and usable, in particular, by overhead or land drones.

Following this workshop, the participants had the opportunity to take part in a tour of McGill University’s Centre for Intelligent Machines (CIM)—the various labs for artificial perception, applied dynamics, mechanical robotics, aerospace mechatronics and the simulator produced by CM Labs.